


I have loved the stars too dearly...

by ThatOneGirlBehindYou



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M, Gen, but she tries and that´s important, pearl doesn´t get human emotions sometimes, platonic pearl/rose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-22
Updated: 2015-04-22
Packaged: 2018-03-25 07:55:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3802639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatOneGirlBehindYou/pseuds/ThatOneGirlBehindYou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pearl has existed for over three thousand years, and she has never witnessed an act of love.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Here are some things she has seen instead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I have loved the stars too dearly...

**Author's Note:**

  * For [IwaKitsune](https://archiveofourown.org/users/IwaKitsune/gifts).



> Gift for my homie C for getting me into the show in the first place!
> 
> Ok so this started off as a character analysis of my lovely wife Pearl and it suddenly spiralled out of control, I´m sorry. Anyways, it´s done now and that now means I get to work on my Moms!verse AU (another SU fanfiction for any of you that are interested in both my writing and gay space rocks) so yay!!
> 
> I hope you enjoy this one!

Pearl has existed for over three thousand years, and she has never witnessed an act of love.

 

Here are some things she has seen instead.

-

**Weakness**

It wasn't love, what made Sapphire and Ruby different. The word didn't even exist in Homeworld's native language, but they still stood out like a sore thumb. Everyone knew they were together too often, too dependent on each other. Pearl knew all this, and didn't wonder why she looked at a certain gem and yearned for something similar. Her malfunctioning status had never been a secret.

 

**Devotion**

The word still didn't exist when she followed Rose Quartz for the first time into this promising planet of hers, so it still wasn't love, when Pearl took exactly one look at the primitive life forms Rose called 'humans' and 'beautiful' and 'fascinating', and pledged to defend them against all she had ever known with her dying breath if need be.

 

**Strength**

It was a foreign concept still when gems cracked and fell all around her, when the blade of Rose's sword flashed next to her in those few occasions in which her own spear was too slow to parry a thrust. When Ruby's body flashed and faded into her gemstone after she threw herself against a huge, orange-skinned gem Pearl had always avoided in the corridors. When Sapphire thrust the vulnerable red gem into the folds of her dress and punched the bigger gem with her crystalline knuckle dusters hard enough to send her flying. Pearl focused on keeping an eye out for Rose herself, in not letting the blows of the enemy damage her body. If Rose was being strong for her she might as well do the same.

 

**Yearning**

The first time she even heard the word was, as would be expected, from Rose's lips.

"I think it's beautiful." She said while they walked across the beach during a tranquil evening (they didn't have many of those, worried as they still were that the war wasn't over for good)

"Hm? The sunset? I know, it's perfect." Pearl answered with a smile, even though she hadn't looked at the horizon in the whole time. Rose chuckled.

"Well, the sunset is beautiful too. But I'm not talking about that right now." And she gestured forward with a tilt of her head that made her mass of pink curls bounce and swing. Up ahead, Ruby and Sapphire preceded them hand in hand. "The way they rely on each other, their trust and their faith... Love is an amazing thing."

"Love?" Pearl frowned at the word and felt its foreign taste in her lips.

"Love." Rose repeated and smiled as though the very act of pronouncing the word brought her joy and warmth. "It's a word humans have for that kind of feeling."

"Between... Two people?" Pearl asked, still unsure.

"That's the best part!" Rose's face lightened up and Pearl had the thought that she'd fallen a bit short with her statement about the sunset. "There's all kinds of love Pearl! A person and their parents, their siblings, their friends, and then there's a kind of love you only feel for certain people, like the one Ruby and Sapphire have for each other."

"... And what does that feel like?" Pearl thought she might not need an answer to that question, not anymore now that she thought about it, but she asked anyways.

"You feel warm and safe and happy, when you're with someone you love. There really isn't anything more beautiful or complex than this feeling, and to think we didn't have a name for it!" Rose laughed.

Slowly, Pearl reached for Rose's hand with one of her own, her eyes fixed in the way Sapphire's hand cradled Ruby's.

Slower still, Rose intertwined their fingers together, and they kept on walking without another word. In the back of her mind Pearl knew her hand didn't fit in Rose's the way Rose's fit in hers, but for the time being it was enough.

 

**Acceptance**

Garnet was 'born' not long after that evening. Hers was the first fusion Pearl had ever seen performed, and she found that the stoic, point-driven gem was much easier to deal with than Sapphire with her ever-hidden face, not to mention enthusiastic and fiery Ruby. She felt a bit guilty when she thought to herself that she wished Garnet didn't have to unfuse.

"I want to stay like this." Were Garnet's next words, as though she had peered into Pearl's mind. Rose's eyes widened in surprise, but she recovered quickly enough to soften her features into a smile.

"I don't think it has ever been done before." Rose touched the palm of her hand to Garnet's dark cheek. "You're so special..."

A tear ran down from under Garnet's glasses and into her full curved smile. Pearl felt her eyes beginning to water too, when she stepped forward to join Rose in hugging their new teammate.

 

**Compassion**

Rose's hand found hers even before it started shaking, as soon as they stepped into the Kindergarten.

“This is fine Pearl.” She whispered. “It´s shut down, we just came here because-”

“Because humans have been mentioning strange encounters around.” Pearl nodded. “I brought you that report, Rose.”

Rose giggled. “Sometimes I forget just how efficient you are.” She said, and Pearl felt her cheeks blush. It´d been decades since she´d thought of herself as `defective´, but Rose´s words could still make her feel like she was irreplaceable.

“This place feels all wrong.” Garnet muttered next to them and when they turned to face her she´d wrapped her arms around her torso, and her fingers dug deeply into the flesh of her forearms.

The air around them was chilly, and the bare rock walls looked rotten, eaten through and grotesque like a corpse, all peppered with gem-shaped holes. The hulking forms of the activating machines felt like silent judges of their every movement.

“It does.” Pearl agreed. “How do we find out what has been scaring the humans?”

“I gues-”

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?!” The voice that cut down Rose´s could only be described as monstrous, and the way it echoed off the mountain faces only distorted if further.

Rose´s features hardened in a second, and she took a step forward.

“We have received reports that something has been chasing humans out of this place, and we have come to investigate.” She enunciated clearly, with no open hostility but hard enough to be a warning.

“GO AWAY!” The mysterious being yelled again, and Pearl frowned. As much as she tried, the echos would simply not allow her to locate whatever it was that was trying to scare them off.

“Come out to meet us. If you are not a threat to the humans, we will leave you be.” Said Rose, her voice still calm and confident.

“I AM NOT A THREAT TO ANYONE THAT STAYS AWAY FROM MY HOME.”

Rose spared a look around and after a little hesitation, stepped down from the warp pad. Pearl stood still on her spot, but she focused her energy in the middle of her forehead, just in case anything tried to move too fast.

“Is this really your home though?” Rose asked. “All alone out here?”

“I´M NOT ALONE” The voice roared back, but it sounded a bit weaker. A bit confused.

“Then are there others with you?”

“There´s no one like me.” The voice´s volume dropped so dramatically it was hard to hear it over the still resounding echo of the last scream, but Pearl closed her eyes and listened carefully. When she parted her eyelids again Rose´s face was turned towards her, and Pearl tilted her chin to gesture at one particular cluster of holes near the base of a cliff.

“Then why stay here?” Rose headed that way with slow steps and stopped a few feet short from the base. “I am Rose Quartz. These are Pearl and Garnet, we are the Crystal Gems and we protect humans. Who are you?”

“... You said you´re gems?” The voice had gone from confused to a shaky hopeful.

“I did. Do you know what gems are?” Rose crouched to peek into one of the holes, and then moved to the next. The voice did not answer, but Rose continued her search, and the other two knew she had found what she was looking for when she flinched as hard as if she´d received a slap, and turned back to look at them.

Pearl and Garnet approached slowly until they were only a few steps behind Rose.

“Will you come out? I promise no one will try to hurt you.” Rose offered a hand to the entrance of the hole. “What´s your name?”

Pearl slapped her hand to her mouth just in time to stop the gasp that threatened to come out of her lips., when a young short purple gem took a step out of the hole with wide eyes that contradicted her clenched fists.

“Amethyst.”

She couldn´t look at her face from the angle she was in, but Pearl could have traced the exact curve of Rose´s smile just from the tone of her voice.

“Well Amethyst, I´m happy to meet another gem. How about we show you where we live? It´s a bit cozier than this place.”

The other gem looked up with eyes full of something Pearl thought just might be similar to what Rose had talked about that evening at the beach. 

Amethyst moved in with them and, for the first time in a while, they felt whole.

 

**Passion**

Everything about _him_ had been a problem from the start.

Pearl had tried to convince Rose to drop it, to let go of the shiny piece of paper with the garish text on it, because she didn't understand why Rose would rather spend time with humans than with them. 

She had tried to scare _him_ away, countless times from day one when _he_ stumbled into the cave following Amethyst, but nothing worked and Pearl grew even more desperate as days became weeks and then months and the time they spent together elongated slowly but surely. 

Sometimes she would watch as they sat on the sand and _he_ sang and smiled and as she laughed and let _him_ touch her hair and her face and touched _his_ in return. Garnet would stand next to her, and pat her shoulder lightly before continuing her way.

She despised it a little, because the way Rose spoke of _him_ , the way she often caught _him_ looking at her when _he_ thought no one was looking, it spoke of a feeling much more complex than Pearl would have thought, a feeling scary and dangerous in its unpredictability. Pearl sometimes looked at Rose and didn't know who she was seeing anymore.

At some point Rose announced she loved _him_ , and Pearl felt her grip on her physical form grow weak as if she'd been stricken.

It hadn't been more than a year later, when they spoke of a 'baby', and Amethyst cheered and hugged them and Garnet smiled a bit sadly and offered her congratulations. Pearl smiled, feeling robotic like one of her sparring clones, and held on to the gesture until she felt it was appropriate to take her leave.

Back then she hadn't known what the announcement implied exactly, the only thing she knew was that Rose had found what she'd been looking for all along, and that no matter how hard Pearl had tried, it had _never_ been her.

**Pain**

Rose was gone forever, and Greg held a small rosy bundle in his meaty arms and Pearl felt like her gem was being crushed to dust. Rose had been her reason to rebel, to fight, to survive and to live and now she was gone.

She looked upon the creature's face (Steven, Greg had said, Steven Quartz) and this just couldn't be the feeling Rose had spoken about centuries ago at the beach, the feeling she died for, not this cold indifference and the thick void of loss in her stomach.

Steven's eyes open, dark and huge and beautiful, and he stretches a pudgy hand towards Pearl.

The moment his fingers close around her index, barely managing to surround it but pressing with all the force he can mutter, Pearl understands. Maybe humanity is still primitive and crude and it will be millenia until they get even a bit close to what Pearl would like them to be, but this kid here, with Greg's hair and Rose's eyes and the faint pink glow emanating through the blanket, the beginning of a new species, is beautiful and perfect.

-

Pearl has existed for over three thousand years, and the first image that comes to her brain when she hears the word love is that bright smiling child she would fight everything to protect.


End file.
